/ Running a fridge in a cold room

I was leafing through the manual for my fridge (good times, good times) and noticed it's meant to operate in an ambient room temperature of 16°C to 38°C. Just wondering if anyone knows what happens when you run it below that temperature range; inefficient, fridge doesn't last as long, it explodes in a cloud of dust? I'm guessing it's not the last one as the temperature in the kitchen (where it is) is between 5°C and 12°C during the winter and it's not exploded yet.

In reply to Ben Sharp: Since fridges work on the basis of compressing a gas into liquid form and then allowing the resultant expansion of that gas to cause a temperature drop, if the ambient temperature is too low, the gas will never vaporise and your fridge will not work. A bit like a butane gas stove tends not to be too lively in freezing temperatures.

In reply to Ben Sharp: I wonder if the fact it's under the worksurface insulates it a bit and keeps the temperature surrounding the fridge higher than that in the room, hence why it's working at a lower temperature than it's supposed to.

In reply to Ben Sharp: If it's a compressor driven cooling cycle I would expect it to work down to whatever the lowest permissible internal fridge temperature is specified at. Probably at reduced efficiency. If it's a "gas" fridge I would guess that certain parts of the cycle need to be within range, otherwise the cycle stops. Does it have motor, or heater?

In reply to Ben Sharp: I have this problem every winter as our kitchen is really cold. Freezer completely defrosts itself quite regularly, which is annoying. Moving it into another part of the house is the only answer at the moment. I think it's to do with the frost free design - the freezer is designed to do a mini-defrost. The resultant water is then suppposed to vapourise from a little tray at the back of the unit, which doesn't happen when it is below about 5 degrees.

You can get fridges and freezers designed to operate in low temperatures. The freezer in our garage is perfectly happy down to very low temperatures (below zero) but it was specifically bought for that purpose and has a big sticker on the front stating that it is fine down to -15C.